What to Look for in the January Political Party Reports

Democrats Were Up at the Half-Way Point and Republicans Down, Especially with Small Contributions

Click here to see data from the party reports covering January 2014 that were filed after this analysis was released.

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Here are some interesting points we noticed as we were looking at the year-end reports the political party committees filed with the Federal Election Commission last month. We plan to keep them in mind as we wait for the January reports the parties are filing today.

At the December halfway mark of this congressional midterm election cycle:

The three Democratic committees had raised more than their Republican counterparts;

The GOP’s receipts were actually lower in constant dollars in 2013 than in 2005 or 2009, the previous two midterms (Table 1);

Most of the Republican drop was in small, unitemized contributions ($200 or less);

At the same time, the Democrats’ small contributions have been going up (Table 2).

The following graphs show the combined Republican and Democratic funds at the end of December in the three midterm elections since the McCain-Feingold law of 2002. The graph at the top shows nominal dollars, with the Republicans in red and the Democrats in blue. The graph on the bottom is in constant dollars.

As the graphs illustrate, Democratic fundraising has been going up in constant dollars, but the Republicans have lost nearly $66 million since 2005. In other words, the GOP has lost about one-fourth of what it raised in 2005. Small contributions account for nearly $43 million (or two-thirds) of the parties’ financial losses since 2005.

The six attached tables give more details.

The first two tables show where the parties stood at the end of the first year of a two-year cycle:

Table 1 gives the basic numbers for all elections since 1992 at the halfway mark. The results are in nominal and constant dollars for each of the six committees: Democratic National Committee (DNC), Republican National Committee (RNC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

Table 2 shows unitemized contributions for the years 2003 through 2013. Note: The unitemized contributions reported here are substantially larger than the small-donor money CFI reports at the end of the cycle. Those reports are for money coming from donors whose contributions cumulatively aggregate to $200 or less.

The next four tables show the parties at the end of the two-year cycle.

Table 3 shows the full two-year totals for the six committees from 1992-2012.

Table 4 shows the sources of RNC and DNC funds, by the donors’ aggregated contributions, at the end of the two-year cycle in 2000-2012.

Table 5 shows the same for the two congressional campaign committees (DCCC and NRCC).

Table 6 shows the same for the two Senatorial campaign committees (DSCC and NRSC).

The Campaign Finance Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute. Statements of the Campaign Finance Institute and its Task Forces do not necessarily reflect the views of CFI's Trustees or financial supporters.